Okay, here’s how the games ended up being rated by those who filled out the Fairplay poll at Essen this year. These are the games with the best average ratings, based on a minimum of 40 votes. Again, the ratings range from 1-6, with lower being better. The number in parentheses is the number of votes.
1. Russian Railroads – 1.73 (85)
2. Concordia – 1.84 (64)
3. Glass Road – 1.91 (65)
4. Bruxelles 1893 – 2.12 (49)
5. Kashgar – 2.13 (63)
6. Rokoko – 2.15 (41)
7. Spyrium – 2.21 (72)
8. Madeira – 2.22 (58)
9. Love Letter – 2.24 (97)
10. UGO – 2.30 (44)
11. Amerigo – 2.35 (85)
12. Coal Baron – 2.40 (55)
13. Yunnan – 2.44 (40)
14. Guildhall – 2.48 (42)
14. Nauticus – 2.48 (42)
16. Sanssouci – 2.61 (59)
17. Tash-Kalar – 2.75 (48)
So Russian Railroads nips Concordia at the end to earn Game of the Show honors. Congratulations to designers Ohley and Orgler, as well as to Hans im Gluck. I see there’s mostly gamer’s games at the top, which, as I mentioned earlier, isn’t always the case. It’s interesting that Glass Road is the Rosenberg game that got the high rating and not Caverna, but that might be due to the shorter duration of the former game (it can be hard to get sufficient ratings for a long game, as fewer gamers will take the time to play it). Or maybe Glass Road is just the better game.
Other anticipated games that didn’t make the list include Prosperity and Bremerhaven. There are any number of reasons why that might be the case, so there’s no need to start worrying if you preordered one of these. The Fairplay poll is always a fun guide, but history has shown it’s far from infallible, so the next step is to see what all the many non-Essen attendees think of the new games in the weeks to come.
To what do you guys with opinions attribute the sometimes vast difference between Fairplay and Geekbuzz?
It’s a different crowd. The Fairplay poll is primarily for readers of Fairplay magazine. If you are a subscriber, you receive a form which contains an ID number for you plus two that you can hand on to friends. It may also be possible to register at the stand, I’m not sure, but the upshot is that most of the Fairplay voters are going to be German. BGG, on the other hand, is an American website it will pull in the English-speaking voters.
Caverna, Prosperity and Bremerhaven were on the list of games which had good scores but fewer than 40 votes.
Thanks, Brian. This is an important detail, and I think it demonstrates Larry’s point that some games, like Caverna, might not be sufficiently easy to play during the fair. My memory is that Lookout’s booth only had two tables, and that I only saw Caverna being played one other place (Asmodee booth, if I remember correctly). Bremerhaven and Prospertity were also both among the rather extensive options at the Asmodee booth. Perhaps if any of these games had 3-4 dedicated tables, like Concordia or Bruxelles 1893 or Glass Road, we would have seen them pass the 40-vote threshold.
For me , the surprise is Tash-Kalar at 17. There were so many games of it being demoed, and several oversized boards to attract attention. It felt like CGE was really putting on the full-court press to generate attention for the title, so I expected it to finish higher up the list.
The complete list from the FairPlay website of games that had good scores but fewer than 40 votes: Atacama, Bremerhaven, Caverna, Citrus, Ebbes, Lewis & Clark, Maus & Mystik, Nations and Prosperity.
Odd…Lewis and Clark and Legacy and Nations sold out….yet I found Russian Railroads in the bargain bin….no idea who was voting for that game because there was no buzz for it that I could detect. It was quite stale.
Well, Russian Railroads got the second most votes of any game in the list, so SOMEBODY was voting for it! (The initial rating on the Geek is also really high.)
Just a note that the games that did well on the geekbuzz all seemed to be in the same geographic region as the bgg voting booth… People paying the games first then voting, or voting for games they remember recently seeing… For me the fairplay seemed a more gamer based set of results